Descent Into Bullyboys: A Green Circus

 An old Carleton College (and later Africa Peace Corps chum) shared this bizarre website, which matches old 1960s-70s "Family Circus" comics with quotes from German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.  While I usually tip my cap to Alexis de Tocqueville, Nietzsche had a similar "blogging" style of writing... composing philosophical metaphors and cultural observations without editorial oversight.  There's always the outside hope, if you blog honestly, that something might be recognized for its value - de Tocqueville letter, Nietzsche quip, later-bro.  Afta!


Nietzsche Family Circus

HOME / POPULAR / CONTACT

Randomized pairings of Family Circus cartoons and Friedrich Nietzsche quotes. Refresh for a new comic and share your favorites.

refresh
share

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."

Motherload Blog Alert: Foreshadowing Karma

My next posting is nearly finished, and it's another college-thesis styled attempt to tie together several themes of this Good Point Recycling blog.

- Accidental Racism, Environmental Malpractice, Environmental Injustice
- Cognitive bias, psychological basis for the mis-prescriptions of justice and intolerance
- Facts, statistics, and environmental best practices
- Geographical and social development forces, from urbanization to 'state-hate'

I'm a little bit afraid to hit the "publish" button, I want to reread it again over the next two days.  But as a preview, here are two links, one to a CNN interview of Harvard bio-psychologist Steven Pinker, and the other to an amazing Singapore-based undergraduate's philosophical blog (pen name Laicite).

In the treatise, I confess to waging war on too many battlefronts, and the psychological toll it takes on our loyal clients, staff and supporters of Good Point Recycling.   I read an essay by Alexis de Tocqueville on the weekend, and will use the specifics of the Vermont "state-hate" phenomena to shed light on broader truths for the environmental movement.

The blog begins in Singapore, takes a random wander through Vermont "e-waste", touches Lord Chris Smith (UK Env Minister) and Interpol, and ends in Africa.  Environmentalists and bible belters, regulators and entrepreneurs, can all be excellent people, and still wind up wringing collateral damage out of distrust and shame.   The way out is an exercise in leadership, requiring both humility and certain direction.  We evolve to accept differences, to defuse state-hate, and wind up with fusions and Gangstagrass.  

If you don't want to read Steve Pinker, de Tocqueville, or Laicite, I'll assign the pilot episode of My Name Is Earl., something of a transition from the recent "cultural gulf" theme, a very humorous USA television program I just discovered a couple of months ago.

Facebook

Editor Wanted: Because Less Is More

Las Vegas, 4/18/2012.   Weather will finally hit the 80s today - it has been hotter at home in Vermont so far this week than here in Nevada.  Groups and small talk.  Tweet talks.

Had a long after-dinner discussion with someone whom I deeply respect in our little computer refurbishing community last night.  I know something in the blog wasn't resonating with him, thought we'd have a drink and he'd give me some guidance.   He's 11 years older than me, started out as a hippy scavenging from his job on a garbage truck, amazed by what people throw away.

Benjamin Franklin at work on a printing press. Repro of a Charles Mills painting

While he said he could respect the long-bomb "Foreign Affairs" posts, that he simply didn't have time for them, and said more importantly that my denser posts, digressions, and obscure historical parallels were losing people he hoped would be my allies.  He says that groups in the refurbishing community, in particular, could become a groundswell of support for the "geeks of color", the counter- obsolescence planning, and other crusades I'm engaging.

Sounds like a case for less is more.

Now, this blog began (if you go back to the first years posts) as a journal I was convinced that no one at all was reading.   I was shocked by the first comment ever posted... "Not quite no one."

Well, my secret desire is that I'm going to have time one day to tear all 2000 pages (including a number of as-yet unpublished posts that I wasn't happy with) down into 249 pages that say something that hasn't been said in a way that more people would listen to.  I don't happen to care whether that's during my lifetime.  I'm acutely, or rather chronicaly aware I could die next year.

My evening mentor said that's fine, but he'd like to see me pay $14 per hour to some college student or professor just to edit each post as it comes out.  After listening to him, it seems ironically more arrogant not to pursue the idea.